Venture with Grace

Nick Linck is the Founder of The Residency. The Residency is a program that is designed for entrepreneurs, builders, and creators who want to take control of their life and turn their ambitious dreams into reality. The program is unique in that it offers the social experience of college with a revamped version of the traditional educational experience. we provide housing in locations all around the world so that our residents can live and work side-by-side with ambitious peers. we provide coaching and introductions to a network that help guide residents towards their own version of success.Topics: How Gen Z founders and creators approach career building differently.Challenges and opportunities in running a globally distributed housing and coaching program.The growing market for alternative learning and founder-focused communities.#Entrepreneurship #FounderLife #AlternativeEducation #StartupCommunity

Russ Heddleston is the CEO of Distill, having previously founded and sold DocSend for $165 million with $15 million raised, scaling it to over $40m in ARR. Previously, he started and sold an HR tech startup Pursuit to Meta. Russ holds a BS and MS in Computer Science from Stanford and an MBA from Harvard. His work on identity at Meta and his passion for intuitive product design drive his commitment to Distill.Topics: Designing products for virality in enterprise SaaSStructuring teams for speed without sacrificing qualityHiring in the early vs. growth stages#StartupExits #SaaSFounders #VentureCapital #AcquisitionStrategy #ScalingStartups

Roman Chernin is the Chief Business Officer and co-founder of Nebius, an AI-focused cloud infrastructure company. He is responsible for driving the company’s business strategy and growth. Roman's career spans over 20 years in the tech industry, with 12 of those years spent at Yandex, one of Europe's largest technology companies. He began his journey at Yandex leading the Search platform and later became CEO of the Geoservices business unit in 2016.Topics: Evolution of AI-Focused Cloud InfrastructureBuilding partnerships in the AI ecosystemAI Trends and Enterprise Adoption#AI #CloudInfrastructure #VentureCapital #TechLeadership

Snehal Antani is CEO & co-founder of Horizon3.ai, a cyber security company that pioneered the use of AI to autonomously conduct penetration testing. Prior to Horizon3, Snehal served as the first Chief Technology Officer for Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). As a member of the Commander’s executive team, he led data analytics, cloud/edge computing, and cybersecurity initiatives. Prior to serving within US Special Operations, Snehal was CTO & SVP at Splunk, held multiple CIO roles at GE Capital, and started his career as a Software Engineer at IBM. Topics: Building trust in AI security solutions for enterprise adoption.Challenges of productizing AI for a high-stakes industry like cybersecurity.Emerging cyber threats in the AI era#CyberSecurity #AI #PenTesting #VentureCapital #Startup #Leadership

Sunil Rao is the Founder and CEO of Tribble, an AI-powered platform aimed at streamlining and automating go-to-market workflows for enterprise teams. With a technical foundation as a former software engineer at SAP, Rao rose to leadership roles at Salesforce—including VP and GM of Consumer Goods—before launching Tribble in April 2023. Drawing on experience in both engineering and enterprise sales, he drives Tribble’s mission to integrate AI into sales, marketing, and product management, enabling organizations to scale their expertise more efficiently in an increasingly complex technological landscape.Topics: AI-powered platforms for go-to-market workflow automationStreamlining enterprise sales and marketing processesIntegration of AI in sales, marketing, and product management#AI #GoToMarket #SalesAutomation #MarketingTech #EnterpriseAI

Emily Bennett is a Partner at Owl Ventures. ~~~~~This episode is brought to you by Verivend. If you’re a GP or LP looking to simplify the capital raising and deployment process, Verivend is here to help. Trusted by over 800 funds and managing more than $2 billion in transactions, Verivend offers a secure, streamlined payments platform designed specifically for private capital markets. Say goodbye to manual reconciliation and repeated follow-ups - raise and deploy capital faster and with greater transparency. Ready to make your fund operations smoother? Visit https://bit.ly/3GrB4Qj and see how easy it can be. ~~~~~Emily brings a strong foundation driving product strategy for technology and media companies to the Owl team. Prior to receiving her MBA, Emily served as Product Marketing Manager for News Integrity at Facebook, implementing products and scaled initiatives to help curb misinformation and better incentivize high quality news across the platform. Previously, she was Product Manager for video at the New York Times, where she drove product strategy for immersive streaming experiences, and worked on growth product strategy for the artist-facing platform at Spotify. Emily’s passion for education stems from her early teachers, many of whom she remains in touch with today, who instilled in her a strong belief that high quality education is the most powerful means to generate opportunity. Emily graduated from Middlebury College with a Bachelor of Science degree, magna cum laude, in Neuroscience, where she was actively involved in music and creative writing. Emily received her MBA from Harvard Business School.Topics: Sourcing and evaluating early-stage EdTech and AI startupsTrends and opportunities in the global EdTech sectorNavigating challenges and achieving product-market fit in EdTech#VentureCapital #EdTech #Startups #AI #Entrepreneurship #Investing

Alex Konrad is the founder of Upstarts Media. He cut his teeth reporting at Fortune in 2010, writing about local New York startups such as ZocDoc and General Assembly. After joining Forbes in 2012, he kept covering the scene, writing some of the first in-depth stories about Blue Apron, Peloton and WeWork. For ten years, Alex managed the Midas List franchise of top venture capitalists, expanding the franchise to Europe and writing profiles about the likes of Chris Sacca, the All Raise community, a16z, Benchmark and Sequoia. As co-creator and editor of the Cloud 100 list, he camped in the Utah foothills with Silicon Slopes software billionaires, sang karaoke with Salesforce’s Marc Benioff in Tokyo and traveled to Sydney to tell the world about Melanie Perkins and Canva. Alex’s 15-plus Forbes cover stories also include profiles of Asana’s Dustin Moskovitz, Snowflake’s Frank Slootman, Flexport’s Ryan Petersen, Stripe’s Collison brothers and Wiz’s Assaf Rappaport. He’s also profiled Figma, Plaid and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, among many others.Topics: The Three Questions That Reveal Everything About a StartupThe Power of the Uncomfortable QuestionThe Art of the Cold Email#VCPodcast #StartupStories #VentureCapital #TechJournalism #ForbesAlumni

Hadley is a co-founder and General Partner at Eniac Ventures, where his investment areas include AI (application and tooling layers), data/dev tooling, SaaS, and healthcare. ~~~~~This episode is brought to you by Verivend. If you’re a GP or LP looking to simplify the capital raising and deployment process, Verivend is here to help. Trusted by over 800 funds and managing more than $2 billion in transactions, Verivend offers a secure, streamlined payments platform designed specifically for private capital markets. Say goodbye to manual reconciliation and repeated follow-ups - raise and deploy capital faster and with greater transparency. Ready to make your fund operations smoother? Visit https://bit.ly/3GrB4Qj and see how easy it can be. ~~~~~He also takes the lead on developing the firm’s long-term strategy. Before becoming a VC himself, Hadley built two successful, VC-backed startups. He joined Vlingo in 2007, working with talented AI founders out of MIT to manage aspects of the business across product, strategy, and marketing, until the company was sold to Nuance for $225M. He then became Chief Business Officer at Thumb, a real-time recommendation app that reached user engagement levels second only to Facebook and was ultimately acquired by YPulse.Topics: The evolution of AI investingApplication layer vs. infrastructureThe transition from building companies to funding them#VCPodcast #EniacVentures #SeedInvesting #AIInvesting #StartupFounder

Ashish Kakran is a Partner at Sierra Ventures, where he leads early-stage investments in AI, cloud infrastructure, and cybersecurity. ~~~~~This episode is brought to you by Verivend. If you’re a GP or LP looking to simplify the capital raising and deployment process, Verivend is here to help. Trusted by over 800 funds and managing more than $2 billion in transactions, Verivend offers a secure, streamlined payments platform designed specifically for private capital markets. Say goodbye to manual reconciliation and repeated follow-ups - raise and deploy capital faster and with greater transparency. Ready to make your fund operations smoother? Visit https://bit.ly/3GrB4Qj and see how easy it can be. ~~~~~Before Sierra, Ashish spent seven years in venture, most recently as a Partner at Thomvest Ventures, where he invested in companies including Cohere, Harness, Isovalent (acquired by Cisco), Opaque, and Exaforce. Ashish is known for working closely with technical founders. Prior to venture, he spent nearly a decade in engineering and product leadership roles at early-stage infrastructure startups, giving him firsthand insight into company building from the ground up. He holds a BS in Computer Science from IIT and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management. Ashish has been recognized by VC Journal’s “40 Under 40” and Business Insider’s “Rising Stars in VC.” Topics: The current AI infrastructure stackEvaluating AI companies: technical differentiation vs. go-to-market executionSecurity in the age of AI #VCPodcast #AIInfrastructure #CloudNative #Cybersecurity #TechnicalFounders

Molly Alter is a Partner at Northzone, based in New York. ~~~~~This episode is brought to you by Verivend. If you’re a GP or LP looking to simplify the capital raising and deployment process, Verivend is here to help. Trusted by over 800 funds and managing more than $2 billion in transactions, Verivend offers a secure, streamlined payments platform designed specifically for private capital markets. Say goodbye to manual reconciliation and repeated follow-ups - raise and deploy capital faster and with greater transparency. Ready to make your fund operations smoother? Visit https://bit.ly/3GrB4Qj and see how easy it can be. ~~~~~She invests across early and growth stages, with a particular focus on Vertical SaaS and AI. Her portfolio includes companies such as GovDash and Clarium.Before joining Northzone, Molly was an investor at Index Ventures and Insight Partners, where she served on the boards of leading technology companies including Quantive, Glia, Lightricks, and Frame.io, which sold to Adobe for $1.3B. Since beginning her venture capital career in 2016, she has led and supported investments across both the U.S. and Europe, building a transatlantic perspective on scaling B2B software companies. Molly holds a degree in the History of Science from Harvard University.Topics: The $1.3B Exit Playbook: Lessons from Frame.io's Journey to AdobeHow AI is Modernizing Ancient IndustriesAI-First vs. AI-Enabled: Which Business Models Actually Scale?Healthcare supply chain AI trends#VerticalSaaS #AIInvesting #HealthTech #GovTech #VentureCapita